The Greek Government has donated 907,200 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines in a bid to boost Nigeria’s covid vaccination drive and improve relations between both nations.
This was disclosed in a letter received from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Greece, His Excellency, Nikolaos Dendias to Nigeria’s health Ministry published on Tuesday,
The Health Ministry stated that vaccines remain the most important and effective way to manage the global COVID-19 scourge.
The Honourable Minister of State for Health, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora said there were protocols for receiving vaccines, first being certification and routine checks by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), then the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) which takes the lead in vaccine administration in Nigeria and will only be accepted after due diligence.
“We want to be sure that our Agencies are looking at all the necessary indices, we have to ensure the cold chain, the storage, the distribution and the capacity of personnel that will be involved in carrying out the vaccination.
“We also look at the expiry date of the vaccines to ensure that we are in a position to manage and get the populace vaccinated within the period. There is need to make sure, that we are all on the same page in terms of readiness, and all that it takes before we go ahead to accepting vaccines,“ he added.
Greece Foreign Affairs Minister said that the vaccines, which will go through the COVAX gateway, should not be seen as a gesture or donation but rather, serving a moral obligation, noting that “Unless the whole world is safe, nobody is safe.”
He added that Greece is ready to offer help to Nigeria in the mechanism and software of administering the vaccines.
Recall that the World Health Organization (WHO) had earlier warned against describing the Omicron variant as mild, but rather insisted that it is killing people across the globe.
The caution by the UN health agency is coming against the backdrop or recent report that suggests that the Omicron variant is less likely to make people seriously ill than the previous variants of Covid.
